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What are some other key predictors?

Women who have more traditional gender attitudes are significantly happier in their marriages. They're more likely to embrace the idea that men should take the primary lead in breadwinning and women should take the primary lead in nurturing the children and managing the domestic sphere, managing family life.

Considering the social changes in the last 40 or 50 years, what percentage of women still hold those traditional views?

It's around 35 percent in the population at large. But it's not just a question of who works inside or outside the home. What's more predictive of a woman's happiness is whether or not her husband is the primary breadwinner. The income actually is a more important predictor of her happiness than whether she works outside the home. Having a husband who earns the lion's share of the income makes the average woman happier in her marriage. If the husband earns more than 66 percent of the income, the wife is more likely to report that she's happy with her marriage, and she's also more likely to report that she spends quality time with her husband.

My theory is that women are looking for, in general, husbands who provide them with emotional and financial support, and support to make the choices that they think are important for them and for their children. Women who have husbands who are good breadwinners have the freedom to decide what they want to do, whether that's to stay home with their kids, whether that's to work part time, or whether that's to pursue work that might be more meaningful but not particularly remunerative. Having a husband who is a good breadwinner gives a woman more options. It's not necessarily all about traditional roles, per se. It's about having the financial security as a wife and maybe mother to act in ways that you think are best for you and for your family.

What are some other factors?

Spouses who share weekly [church] attendance had happier wives. Spouses who share a strong, normative commitment to marriage—that is, who are opposed to easy divorce, who believe the kids should be reared in married households—have wives who are markedly happier. This factor is as strong as who works outside the home or who earns the lion's share of the income. It's also extremely important that the wife considers the division of housework to be fair to her. A sense of equity is extremely important, but equity is not equality. Women want things to be fair in their homes, but they don't equate fairness with equality.

What does your research say, if anything, about the egalitarian and complementarian argument in evangelical churches?

I don't have any access to data that would look specifically at people's attitudes towards headship and the quality or stability of their marriages. But this study certainly does suggest that when it comes to different emphases in the family, the complementarian side seems to be, shall we say, more in touch with how the average American married couple experiences family life. I reran all of my analyses with a sub-sample of women who had more egalitarian attitudes. Even for these women, they're more likely to be happy when their husbands earn the lion's share of income, when they share religious attendance with their husbands, when they share a strong, normative commitment to marriage with their husbands, and when they don't work outside the home.

What's ahead for marriage in the future?

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October 2006, Vol. 50, No. 10